June 13, 2024
Troy D. Smith
“A History of Israel and Palestine, Part 3”
As of last week, we had reached the tenth century BCE and
established the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the cities of Philistia. That
was the southern Levant. After the Bronze Age Collapse of around 1200 BCE,
there was a shuffling of powers in the northern Levant. The seafaring
Phoenician city-states in Lebanon -cities like Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut
-prospered in the following centuries, establishing colonies in other parts of
the Mediterranean world, most notably the city of Carthage. In modern Syria,
Damascus -which had previously been batted back and forth between the Hittites
and the Egyptians -became a prominent city under the Arameans (who spoke
Aramaic). To the northeast of Syria, the Assyrians became a major power, their
central cities being Assur (from which they got their name) and Ninevah, in
modern Iraq. Egypt, of course, remained a power far to the south.
For the next thousand years, the area formerly known as
Canaan, later as Palestine, would be frequently caught in a tug-of-war between
various empires. In the ninth century BCE, the Aramean king of Damascus
(Hazael) expanded his kingdom into a proto-Empire, but a century later was
crushed by Assyria… who also conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and
(according to the Bible) took the inhabitants of the Israelite capitol,
Samaria, into captivity, never to return home. By 605 the Assyrians had been
greatly weakened, and were themselves crushed by an alliance including the Medes
(from modern Iran) and the New Babylonians (Chaldeans from Iraq). Eight years
later the Babylonians conquered Judah and destroyed Jerusalem, taking many of
the Jews into captivity in Babylon. They also conquered the cities of the Philistines
and took them into captivity, as well. The Philistines maintained their
identity while captive for over a century, but eventually faded out of history.
Their cities were resettled by Phoenicians (remember, descendants of
Canaanites). About half-a-century after the Jewish captivity had begun, Babylon
was conquered by Persia -who allowed the Jews to return home, escaping the fate
of the Philistines. By 539 BCE Persia controlled The Levant. The returned
Judeans spoke Hebrew and there were some Arabs in the area speaking their own
language, but the common tongue of the whole region was Aramaic.
Whew. Got all that?
In 480 BCE the Persian westward advance was checked by the
Spartans in Thermopylae. In 330 BCE the Persian Empire was crushed by Alexander
the Great of Macedonia, and now Greeks were in charge of The Levant. When
Alexander died in Babylon at age 32, his vast empire was divided among his top
four generals, with Seleucus (and his descendants) in charge of Asia Minor,
Syria, and Mesopotamia, and Ptolemy (and his descendants) in charge of Egypt
-both at one time or another exerting influence in The Levant (and all the
rulers, essentially, Greek even though they were being called Syrian and
Egyptian). Koine Greek became the official language of the area, and was spoken
by rulers and administrators, while most of the common people spoke Aramaic and
their local languages.
By 167 BCE, Seleucid king Antiochus IV was suppressing the
culture and religion of the Judeans, which led them to (successfully) rise up
in revolt under the leadership of the Maccabee family. The Seleucids were being tested at the same
time by several of their conquered peoples, which helped enable the Maccabees
to win Judean independence and establish the Hasmonean Kingdom, which ruled
most of The Levant for a hundred years.
And then, in 63 BCE, Rome showed up. They destroyed the
Seleucid empire, then ended the Hasmonean kingdom and divided it into three
provinces: Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. Judea was allowed to have its own king,
though: Herod. Throughout the first century CE, Jewish zealots sporadically led
insurgencies against the Romans, erupting into full-scale rebellion in 66 CE…
and leading to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70
CE. The Romans deported 30,000 Jews to Carthage and sold 100,000 into slavery,
with many thousands more leaving on their own steam. Two generations later, in
132 CE, there was another Jewish rebellion that led to more death and
destruction. At that point Rome changed the name of the province from Judea to
Syria Palaestina. When the Roman Empire divided into West and East (Byzantine)
in 391, The Levant was under the control of the Byzantine Empire -often at odds
in the area with the Persians, with both sides having Arabic allies. Jews had
become a minority, and most people in the area were now Christian.
To be continued.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee
Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
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